> I also didn’t mean to strawman you about zero regulation.
Fair enough, mainly because I'm not the person you were originally discussing with :)
Going backwards, “we should have good regulations and not bad ones” is a very general, to the point of meaningless opinion (as you point out) but the actual opinion is "regulations tend to increase their ill effects as their limits on competition increase" i.e. lack of competition correlates with things like bad corner cutting, to the point that I would posit that it's a cause.
So, if we take that and steel man that case - zero regulation means you and I can both start touting our nuclear power station designs, and that would be bad. On the other hand, no one is going to employ either of us because there is competition that is clearly better. Still, I'm sure there are some health/work/environmental regulations that would/should be introduced that would also limit competition and kick us out of the market *but* wouldn't limit it to a monopoly or an effective cartel.
Contrasting that with regulatory capture that does produce a monopoly or an effective cartel (or more likely, is the result of regulations, shall we say… encouraged by incumbents to protect or produce a monopoly or cartel), we end up with say 2 or 3 giant companies that no one can compete with because of their size and the regulations protecting them, then they can do what they want and the kind of good regulations that you and I might both agree on are actually cut or ignored.
Banking, might be a good example. They do something wrong, who bails them out? Why not let them die? Why is it so hard to even enter the market? Why do we see so many financial giants engage in wrongdoing and yet so few receive punishment?
We can't turn to anyone else, that's why. 1 doctor on a ship who's a murderer, lock them in their cabin, but what do you do when someone needs surgery? You let them out. 100 doctors on a ship and 1 is a murderer… you lock them up and then pick the best doctor.